Universal App for content, will it really work?

Into the second week...which is typically a lot harder than the first. Im getting use to the idea of full-time work and loving the fact that when I get home I don’t have to think about uni assignments to do. The team at Kiwa are coming along nicely with the IT Department making good progress, the Design and Marketing team coming up with some wicked adverts and designs for our ‘QBook Newsletter’ to which you can subscribe to and win an iPod Touch. Last Friday Roger and I went to a meeting with the team at Penguin to discuss the PR campaigns and what strategies we are going to use.

It was a successful meeting and Penguin are very excited about QBooks and what it can offer, such as improving reading comprehension and developing reading skills. With the first week going by quickly it was finished with a game of Call of Duty in the office and a few beers at the end of the day!

I stumbled upon an article by a blogger on Zinio and its iPhone App and how it could pay off big for publishers looking into the digital world. The idea around a middleman for the publishers who create the content and emerging devices (mobile apps, e-readers, tablets) that can feature the product. Now this sounds like a great idea...the use of a middleman to serve as a distributor for publishers who then are able to have their content distributed on a wide range of devices.

However, I see one major problem with this, the devices themselves. Companies nowadays want exclusiveness; they want to be the one and the only one that particular content is on. If publishers have their content on every source it decreases the brand value of the major players in the market such as the iPhone. There would be no need to purchase an iPhone if they can get all their content on another device. Why would Apple and Windows want to share content? Automatically the pull towards one product over the other is gone.

Zinio have a great App but its vision of executive Vice president Philippe Guelton of being “in as many stores as possible and be on as many devices as possible.” Sounds good in theory, but they key will lie in the super powers of digital devices.